


separate parts without a whole

by watername



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 11:10:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watername/pseuds/watername
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt from rachelleneveu: Gale Hawthorne and Annie Cresta - recovery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	separate parts without a whole

Annie pretends telling her daughter about her father. She pictures the slant of her lips and the knots of her fingers and hears her childlike reassurances. Try as she might, she can’t picture any version of herself that is the reassurer. She presses the feel of her hand against her side, searching for her hipbone. It’s getting harder to find. 

The days pass and Finnick stays dead. She keeps this in mind when voting that no more children will die. Not at deliberate, political hands. 

Snow dies. Coin dies. Katniss is a murderer once again, but it’s not the celebration, the victory, everyone envisioned. Snow doesn’t die out of justice, he dies because of his own plans folding in upon themselves. Somehow Annie feels that’s more appropriate.

The day she gives birth to her child, she wakes up and can’t find herself. She’s lost everything, _everything_ , and she has nothing left to give this child. Dead father, mad mother, a country barely standing on a decrepit sense of what it means to survive. A doctor is called as her screams are heard and she stares at ceilings rushing past her. 

Her fingers dig into her palms so hard it’s crescent-scarred hands that hold her child for the first time.

She lies in bed as the doctor, the nurse, and assorted visitors have come and gone. She is as healthy as they can measure her to be, her child is alive - a rare commodity she’s trying not to grow attached to. 

In the days that follow she has visitors, people telling her that Finnick would be so proud. There’s a worn feeling to her heart, even as she knows it’s true. There’s a part of her - but not her lips - that says Finnick is only as proud as he is alive. Which is to say, not at all.

She gets up on the fourth day, her child being swayed by Beetee, who’s whispering formulas as lullabies. 

There’s a man outside in the hallway, someone she doesn’t think she’s ever met. The emptiness of the ignorance is intoxicating.

"So, you’re Finnick’s wife," he says, the gentleness in his voice unfamiliar and out of practice. "I’m Gale. From District 12."

"Gale from District 12," she repeats. Saying he’s from District 12 is about as accurate as calling her Finnick’s wife. She realizes, pieces clicking together, that it’s a willful inaccuracy, not a delusion, but refusing to forget what was. She thinks that’s something she needs.

"Annie Cresta."


End file.
